


the Jedi we need

by dilangley



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Finn's Secret, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22122397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilangley/pseuds/dilangley
Summary: Finn shares his secret with Poe.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 14
Kudos: 165





	the Jedi we need

**Author's Note:**

> No beta. Forgive me my sins. I do _not_ have a strong background in Star Wars lore.
> 
> I had to write this to address some things I had a lot of feelings about. See the note at the end for my discourse.

Somewhere on the other side of surrender, two generals figure out this new life. 

They place Jannah in charge of Stormtrooper location and rehabilitation. It’s messy work, deciding who to punish and who to save, but she has the intelligence for it. She handpicks her team. 

She asks Finn if he wants to come. He does. He wants to. 

But he is needed here. He must temper the dramatic pilot-become-general as they navigate to peace -- more complicated and diplomatic than any world they have ever known. 

And a sly, hopeful voice in his head whispers to him, suggests he might have his own journey to walk now.

  
  


* * *

“Poe, I need to talk to you.”

In the quiet of their shared quarters, Poe reads the morning briefs on his cot, one knee bent to support the papers, the other leg sprawled over the edge. He looks up at Finn’s serious tone. Wordlessly, he folds the papers and nods. He swallows. Finn sees a flash of steel he does not understand in his eyes.

“Okay. I figured it was coming.”

“Huh?” It’s an involuntary sound. Finn has no idea what Poe is talking about.

“Running spice seemed like my only option at the time. I was younger -- look who I’m talking to, shit…”

Finn tries to keep the smile from sneaking onto the corners of his mouth. Poe’s distress is real, but his misunderstanding is amusing.

“No, it’s not about that,” Finn interrupts. 

“Oh.” Poe relaxes, though a nervous tic settles into his jaw. “Okay then.”

Though he has thought about this conversation extensively, tried to bring it up more than once, Finn still struggles to find the starting words. He wishes he could thread his fingers through Poe’s and show him. 

He’s tried before in those moments when his skin buzzes and his cells open and his lungs breathe in air from galaxies unknown to him. He’s put a hand on Poe’s shoulder, ruffled his hair, nudged against him. He always hoped for some sort of startled reaction, some proof of the tangibility of this like an electric shock.

But no. Here he stands, forced to put it into mere words.

“I think I have... “ He pauses and starts again more clearly. “I can feel the Force.”

He isn’t sure what he expects. Argument maybe. Confused follow up questions. An exasperated expression twisting expressively across Poe’s forehead as they so oft do.

“I knew it,” Poe says. He grins.

“No, you didn’t,” Finn retorts automatically, but he’s grinning too. 

* * *

They have a training course on Ajan Kloss. Of course, they have no Jedi. Rey has set off on some sort of quest of her own, nebulous and unclear. Finn recognizes it as an earned luxury but a luxury nonetheless. He does not understand what happened to her on Exogal, and she will not talk about it. Her silence tied up his tongue too. 

Poe Dameron does not know defeat though. 

“Jedi?” He scoffs as if that is a minor requirement. “Leia has books from training Rey. We’ll use those."

That’s how Finn finds himself sitting on the ground in the humid, dank jungle smelling Gwaji blossoms and listening to Poe’s voice. He barely resists the urge to open one eye to peek out.

“You’re going to lift a rock.”

“Oh, I am?”

“Yes. You’re going to…” He pauses. His voice deepens, an attempt at calm seriousness so sincere it makes Finn smile. “Empty your mind. Empty your senses. Just focus on the rock’s energy.”

“What?”

Finn isn’t trying to be difficult, but it’s crazy. It’s crazy to think he has been called by the Force. He’s a nobody who has already climbed higher than he could have dreamed possible. What was once a number is now a name. He is a general with no family name. He is a defiant blast to the caste system binding this galaxy.

And now he wants to be a Jedi too? Because, what? He felt something? He had a gut feeling, an instinct, an idea? His own hubris humbles him. 

“Hang tight. Let me look at a few more of these notes.”

Finn opens his eyes to see Poe diligently thumbing through the worn pages.

They try again. And again. And again. 

Their lives are busy, so it’s a stolen hour here, a sunrise shift of Finn thinking about a rock and Poe offering theories based on Leia’s notes there. 

Success is minimal. Poe swears he saw the rock wiggle.

But Finn knows it’s not working, and ironically, terribly, he doesn’t think the teacher is the problem.

* * *

Finn seeks Rose out to talk. She’s in the maintenance bay. After the battle against The Final Order, she has been spending most of her time here fixing things. They had offered her other responsibilities, but she politely declined. 

“No offense to two fine men,” she had said, touching her necklace, “but I am missing my general.”

Today she greets Finn from a suspension sling under a ship’s thrusters. Her face is covered in streaks of grease, her hands occupied, but she glances his way with a surprised smile.

“Did I miss lunch?” 

He checks the clock. Turns out they both did. “Yeah. Actually.”

She laughs. “Do Jedis not eat anymore?” 

Her nose crinkles as she teases him. The tips of his ears burn a bit, but he takes the joke in stride, makes a face at her.

“That’s what it’s about, though, right?” 

“You spent a lot of time with Leia while she was training Rey. I wasn’t here. Poe and I were out fighting. I wondered if you had any insight into how it happened.”

He remembers Rey in the Lost Desert, pushing away a transport ship with a raised hand. 

Rose nods. After she produces portion bread and Yoma from her lunch pail, they sit together. He listens closely and asks questions. Nothing seems like an answer for him until Rose makes one off-hand comment, pulling her hair down and pinning it back up absently.

“Leia kept pushing Rey to be honest. She said the Force is truth.”

“What was Rey lying about?” He loses the question before he recognizes its rudeness.

“I don’t think it was like that. I think it was more about the things we keep hidden. Insecurities, fears, stuff like that. Maybe by honest, she just meant more genuine?”

Finn ponders that staring up at the ceiling. When a midnight distress call comes across the scanners, no one has to wake him up. It’s a small fleet of escaped Sith sympathizers, wreaking havoc on a small settlement outside of Pindoon.

Poe nods. They flight suit up and lead the mission themselves. Finn’s competence in the air reminds him the Force may be the truth, but it is not everything. 

He boasts many other talents.

* * *

Other talents aside, however, he dwells on Rose’s words. Each time he and Poe take to the jungle, he knows before they begin that he will fail. His stomach starts to hurt at the sound of Dagwa birds, a Pavlovian response he dislikes.

Seated in a tree -- after Poe spouting some tripe about altitude and fresh air being good for the mind -- Finn tries to clear his senses. He begins by emptying his thoughts of visual cues. He freezes the image in his head, a photograph of the jungle around him, and waits for it to wash away until he only sees the black behind his eyelids.

Touch is easier for him. He has been in many uncomfortable, painful situations before. To let go of scratchy bark and hard wood is nothing. Taste seems to be one and the same right now.

He concentrates on smell next. At first, he breathes shallowly, but then he gets the knack of breathing in only the air itself, not the distracting carnival of sensations. 

He has yet to master sound. No matter how he tries, the sounds do not fall away without another sense coming roaring back.

Yet this time, closer than he has been before to blankness, an idea bubbles out of his mouth.

“I don’t think I’m good enough to be a Jedi.”

It was truth he never intended to speak. Not even to himself. He opens his eyes, and the world crashes back in on him in a rush. A squawking lizard screeches as it hunts insects.

“What?” Poe approaches. His eyebrows knit together.

Finn repeats himself, for he knows better than to lie. 

Poe snorts. “That’s ridiculous. You’re the best man I know.”

He makes it sound like such fact Finn cannot find a way to argue.

“I’m sorry.” Poe softens. “It’s not ridiculous. I didn’t mean that. Tell me why you would let yourself believe something so untrue.”

Finn slides out of the tree and stands in front of his friend. He waves his hands helplessly in front of him.

“Look, I was a stormtrooper. The First Order always talked big game about how equal it was all going to be, but the man in charge? He was a Jedi. Blue-blooded Skywalker Jedi. The Supreme Leader was a Sith, but turns out, he was really just a Palpatine. It’s a closed society, man,” Finn says. He hates how the words sound coming out of his mouth. It’s not what he believes, it’s _not_ _,_ but he can’t help thinking it. “Jedis are not people like me.”

Poe puts his hands on him, tucks one under his elbow, the other at his shoulder, and stares him right in the eye. When he speaks, his voice dips low, husky, something deeper than anger in its current.

“We burned the First Order to the ground, and the only Jedi left is a scavenger from Jakku,” Poe says, “You’re the Jedi we need.”

They hug, and they hold on for a long time, Finn breathing into the curve of Poe’s neck, borrowing strength from Poe’s reckless faith.

Those are the words he leaves in his mind as he empties his senses the next day. Those are the words he whispers to himself in the middle of the night when the doubts creep in. Those are the words rippling across his skin when he and Poe share their long, understanding looks.

  
  


* * *

Five months later, in the same spot where they began, in the same worn patch of jungle, Finn lifts the rock. He sits there completely blank, no sights, no smells, no sounds, and he feels the rock on the edge of his mind, waiting for him. The first time, he commands it to move, and the white-hot line of connection fizzles out.

The next time, he asks it to move, and he feels it oblige. He sees without opening his eyes that it has left the ground to hover in the air. He hears without listening that Poe is shouting for joy.

When Finn relaxes, it drops back down, an ordinary rock on ordinary dirt, but Finn finds his eyes have filled with tears, a lump has grown in his throat. 

“You did it,” Poe says it as though the lifting of a pebble were the greatest of miracles. He flies into him, sweeps him into a hug. “You did it!”

“I did.” Finn is a little shell-shocked. His gratitude swells inside of him, and time feels too short, too slow to wait any longer for a right moment, a quiet moment, a moment of all leisure and no work.

The Force is truth, and Finn can wait no longer to tell his.

He kisses away Poe’s cheeky “No problem” before it can arrive. Poe melts against him. The sweet relief brings his senses flooding back to him, every sight, touch, sound alive in a new way.

“I’m proud of you,” Poe murmurs against his skin. It’s a confession and a promise and a blessing all at once. 

Finn pockets the rock before they leave the jungle that evening. He keeps it on his bedside table.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I actually liked Rise of Skywalker. It was really imperfect, but on the whole, I was entertained. But the dropping of Finn as a main character and the hinting-only approach to his Force-sensitivity was rough. So I could not shake this little idea for after canon. I wanted Finn to explore it.
> 
> I also was kinda sad by Rey being a Palpatine. I mean, on one hand, I liked the idea of her being from "the dark side," so to speak, but it fed too much into the idea that only certain people have a right to the Force. I mean, the LAST Jedi is literally one of the big dog families. So I had Finn grapple with that.
> 
> And I DIDN'T want Finn and Poe to be grappling with any sort of "issues" about homosexuality. I wanted to write it without angst. For me, they weren't trying to not have feelings for each other or anything like that. They were just focused on winning and then wrapping up a war. It wasn't the right time (in their minds), but it wasn't some sort of "Surely I don't feel that way about him..." thing. Love is love is love. They get that.
> 
> Comment if you share or disagree with any of these thoughts from the fic or from this note. I love chatting about things I love!


End file.
